About the Music - Michael Mortilla

The music for this online project was commissioned from Michael D. Mortilla, who has worked with the
UCLA Film & Television Archive since 1988, beginning with his contributions as an accompanist for a long
running series of public programs produced for The Silent Society and presented by UCLA. To
date, Mortilla has accompanied dozens of screenings and events for the Archive.

Mortilla’s scores for the films presented here are for solo piano, with alternate orchestral and
experimental tracks. Several of these scores were derived from Mortilla’s earlier works. For example, in
The Lost World Trailer (alternate score) and How Jones Lost His Roll (piano score), the music was
extracted “as is” from his previous compositions. In the alternate score for How Jones Lost His Roll,
Mortilla revised the existing piano work by adding a solo violin, performed here by Nicole Garcia
(www.RabbitSequence.com). In the background for preservationist Jere Guldin’s commentary, Mortilla
cross fades between the piano and alternate tracks, providing instant examples of how different scores
effect viewers’ perception of the films.

Mortilla’s career as a full-time professional composer started in 1976. His keyboard training began at the
age of four when he was taught several piano pieces by family members. He studied orchestral
percussion in public school and, after attending the Woodstock Festival in 1969, expanded his skills to
include guitar, song writing, piano, and formal composition. Although largely self-taught in composition
and orchestration, Mortilla studied piano with Morton Estrin and Avraham Sternklar, thereby tracing his
musical lineage back to Liszt, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, Salieri, and Haydn.
Michael Mortilla can be found online at www.MIDILifeCrisis.com.